Origin: Egypt Circa: 750 BC to 30 BC Dimensions: 24.5" (62.2cm) high x 14.75" (37.5cm) depth Collection: Egyptian Style: Late Dynastic/Ptolemaic Period Medium: Wood,  More »

Origin: Egypt Circa: 750 BC to 30 BC Dimensions: 24.5" (62.2cm) high x 14.75" (37.5cm) depth Collection: Egyptian Style: Late Dynastic/Ptolemaic Period Medium: Wood, Paint   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 7 th Century BC to 5 th Century BC Dimensions: 10.5" (26.7cm) high Collection: Egyptian Style: Late Dynastic Period Medium: Wood

Origin: Egypt Circa: 7 th Century BC to 5 th Century BC Dimensions: 10.5" (26.7cm) high Collection: Egyptian Style: Late Dynastic Period Medium: Wood   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 664 BC to 525 BC Dimensions: 15.0" (38.1cm) high x 16.5" (41.9cm) wide Collection: Egyptian Style: 26th Dynasty Medium: Stone The 26th Dynasty,  More »

Origin: Egypt Circa: 664 BC to 525 BC Dimensions: 15.0" (38.1cm) high x 16.5" (41.9cm) wide Collection: Egyptian Style: 26th Dynasty Medium: Stone The 26th Dynasty, also known as the Saite Period, is traditionally placed by scholars at the end of the Third Intermediate Period or at the beginning of the Late Dynastic Period. In either case, the Saite Period rose from the ashes of a decentralized Egyptian state that had been ravaged by foreign occupation. Supported by the assistance of a powerful family centered in the Delta town of Sais, the Assyrians finally drove the Nubians out of Egypt. At the close of this campaign, Ashurbanipal’s kingdom was at the height of its power; however, due to civil strife back east, he was forced to withdraw his forces from Egypt. Psamtik I, a member of the family from Sais, seized this opportunity to assert his authority over the entire Nile Valley and found his own dynasty, the 26th of Egyptian history. Known as the Saite Period due to the importance of the capital city Sais, the 26th Dynasty, like many before it, sought to emulate the artistic styles of past pharaoh in order to bolster their own claims to power and legitimize their authority.Yet despite that artist sought to replicate models of the past, Egyptian art of this era was infused with a heightened sense of naturalism. This fact is likely due to the influx of Greek culture. The Saite rulers recognized that Egypt had fallen behind the rest of the Mediterranean world in terms of military technology. Thus, they were forced to rely upon foreign mercenaries, many of whom were Greek. With ties between these two cultures firmly established during the 7th Century B.C., commercial trading quickly blossomed. Special entrepots for foreign traders were established, including the famed center of Naucratis, a Delta town in which Greek merchants were permitted access. During the Saite Period, two great powers of the Mediterranean world became intimately linked, commercially and culturally. As the exchange of ideas flowed across the sea, the Greeks began to experiment on a monumental scale while the Egyptians began to approach art with an enhanced sense of realism.The funerary rites and rituals of Egypt are among the most elaborate and celebrated burial traditions in the ancient world. The foremost concern was the preservation of the body, in order that it might be reborn in the afterlife. While the painstaking mummification process achieved this goal of counteracting the effects of physical decomposition, the ancient Egyptian were not satisfied with a wrapped body alone. Gorgeously decorated mummy cases and sarcophagi developed over the course of thousands of years so that the body could be properly presented to the audience of the gods awaiting the deceased’s arrival in the next world. These cases were created from a variety of materials, including stone, wood, and cartonnage, that were utilized depending upon the wealth and status of the deceased. Some of the earliest examples were relatively unadorned, featuring the general shape of the body highlighted by idealized facial details. Later, they evolved into ornate memorials that sought to recreate the specific appearance of the memorialized individual, both in terms of physical feature as well as clothing and jewelry. Polychrome paint infused the works with color and the finest examples were gilt.This gorgeous fragment comes from the front of an anthropomorphic sarcophagus lid that would have once held the body of the deceased. Here, the artist has clearly succeeded in capturing the individualized facial feature of the deceased despite the idealized tendencies inherent in the style. Subtle features like the figure’s full, fleshy cheeks, round jaw line, and bulbous nose effectively declare this representation to be that of a specific person while simultaneously maintaining an adherence to the standard type. The unadorned wig that crowns the head, the man’s almond-shaped eyes and clearly defined brow, and his sweetly smiling mouth all have their precedent in some of the earliest works of Egyptian funerary art. Created during the twilight of the Late Dynastic Period, this gorgeous fragment of a head reveals that traditional Egyptian art forms continued to thrive despite the increasing influx of Hellenistic tastes. - (X.0377)   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 664 BC to 525 BC Collection: Egyptian Style: 26th Dynasty Medium: Cartonnage The 26th Dynasty, also known as the Saite Period, is traditionally  More »

Origin: Egypt Circa: 664 BC to 525 BC Collection: Egyptian Style: 26th Dynasty Medium: Cartonnage The 26th Dynasty, also known as the Saite Period, is traditionally placed by scholars at the end of the Third Intermediate Period or at the beginning of the Late Dynastic Period. In either case, the Saite Period rose from the ashes of a decentralized Egyptian state that had been ravaged by foreign occupation. Supported by the assistance of a powerful family centered in the Delta town of Sais, the Assyrians finally drove the Nubians out of Egypt. At the close of this campaign, Ashurbanipal’s kingdom was at the height of its power; however, due to civil strife back east, he was forced to withdraw his forces from Egypt. Psamtik I, a member of the family from Sais, seized this opportunity to assert his authority over the entire Nile Valley and found his own dynasty, the 26th of Egyptian history. Known as the Saite Period due to the importance of the capital city Sais, the 26th Dynasty, like many before it, sought to emulate the artistic styles of past pharaohs in order to bolster their own claims to power and legitimize their authority.The preservation of the physical remains of the deceased was an essential aspect of Egyptian funerary practices. As mummification techniques became more and more advanced over time, so did the cartonnage coffins become more and more elaborate. The cartonnage was manufactured by putting several layers of linen (or, much later, papyrus) on top of each other and molding it into a human form with the help of a cast. Finally, the surface of the cartonnage was painted and decorated in vibrant colors, sometimes including gilding. During the Middle Kingdom, mummy masks were made from plastered linen and became increasingly larger until they covered the entire upper body. Eventually, wooden mummy cases covering the entire body became the standard. However, by the Third Intermediate Period, the use of cartonnage to create these innermost coffins was revived, perhaps because the material lends itself to bright painting. Here, the chest panel and the panel that would have covered the legs have been preserved. The chest panel features a winged sun disc at the top. Below, painted beaded necklaces decorate the panel. At the bottom, a winged, kneeling Isis is present looking towards the right. The leg panel is decorated with the images of the gods of the underworld. The vibrant hues of the original polychrome have been remarkably well preserved. This gorgeous pair of cartonnage mummy decorations reveals that the Ancient Egyptian devoted as much energy to the decoration of the body as they did to its preservation. - (X.0378)   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 664 BC to 525 BC Dimensions: 21.25" (54.0cm) high Collection: Egyptian Style: 26th Dynasty Medium: Wood Although Egypt was timber-scarce, her  More »

Origin: Egypt Circa: 664 BC to 525 BC Dimensions: 21.25" (54.0cm) high Collection: Egyptian Style: 26th Dynasty Medium: Wood Although Egypt was timber-scarce, her artisans availed themselves of an amply supply of quality hard woods in order to satisfy their creative impulses. The cultural horizons of ancient Egypt’s long history are replete with examples of magnificent sculptures in wood ranging in size from the miniature to the colossal and in date from the Old Kingdom to the Roman Imperial Period.The use of wood for funerary furnishings accelerated during the course of the Middle Kingdom when tombs were supplied with coffins and so-called models of daily like, richly painted and minutely detailed. The subsequent New Kingdom continued the use of wood for funerary paraphernalia, best exemplified, perhaps, by the numerous religious figures discovered within the tomb of Tutankhamun, but this period was best known for its wooden sarcophagi. This tradition continued into the Third Intermediate Period when lavishly decorated and varnished wooden coffins were often created as multiples, one resting within the other, as revealed by excavations in Thebes.During the course of the Late Period (after 664 BC) the use of wood for statues and sarcophagi once again gained renewed currency, particularly during the course of Dynasty XXX (380-342 BC) and into the early Ptolemaic Period. The finest cache of such coffins were discovered in the last century in the Tomb of Petosiris, a temple like, magnificently decorated sepulcher in Middle Egypt near Ashmumein at Tuna el-Gebel, where excavators discovered a multiple burial in a subterranean chamber. The most glorious of the wooden anthropoid sarcophagi found therein is lavishly inlaid with glass and is to be seen on the ground floor of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.This particular example, which was once heavily painted as the minute white traces of the gesso, or stucco, which served as a base coat to which the paint would adhere, reveal, can be dated to the period between Dynasty XXX and the early Ptolemaic Period on the basis of its stylistic characteristics. These include a somewhat corpulent visage with the protruding, so-called golf-ball chin, full lips horizontally arranged, with their corners drilled, and the so-called hieroglyphic, almond-shaped eyes surmounted by plastic eye brows. The ears, in keeping with Egyptian conventions, appear to be larger than in life, and have been designed in such a way that they lie over the tripartite headdress. The deceased is depicted beardless, but the lack of that attribute does not necessarily reflect a gender distinction because anthropoid sarcophagi of the period inscribed for either men or women often lack the false beard. There is a raised ridge at the neck between the lappets of the headdress which represents a broad collar, its original details painted.Close examination reveals the care lavished by the artists on the modeling of the face with its subtle planes merging to form the corpulent cheeks and to articulate the region surrounding the chin. More noteworthy is the treatment of the eyes as slightly raised discs, their center drill. As a result of such care, this bust from an anthropoid sarcophagus transcends the funerary arts and is elevated into the realm of sculpture in the round.As a sculptural moment, it finds its best parallels in a limestone bust from a so-called sculptor’s model, now in Brooklyn, with which it shares many stylistic features. These same features are found on a number of limestone anthropoid sarcophagi, several examples of which are presently on view in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. As such, this bust is an aesthetically-accomplished representative of the finest quality sculpture created in Egypt during this period.References:Robert Steven Bianchi, Cleopatra’s Egypt. Age of the Ptolemies (Brooklyn 1988), pages 82-3, cat. no. 1 [The Brooklyn Museum of Art 37.37E]. M.L. Buhl, The Late Egyptian Anthropoid Stone Sarcophagi (Copenhagen 1959), page 86, figure 48 [The Metropolitan Museum of Art 86.1.43, inscribed for the Lady Ta-khonsu-ii]. Mohammed Saleh and Hourig Sourouzian, Official Catalogue. The Egyptian Museum Cairo (Mainz 1987), no. 260a [the coffin of Petosiris, JE 46592]. - (X.0437)   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 525 BC to 332 BC Dimensions: 48" (121.9cm) high Collection: Egyptian Style: Late Period Medium: Painted Wood Our wooden panel doubtless comes from  More »

Origin: Egypt Circa: 525 BC to 332 BC Dimensions: 48" (121.9cm) high Collection: Egyptian Style: Late Period Medium: Painted Wood Our wooden panel doubtless comes from a lid of an anthropoid sarcophagus. It is preserved from about the level of the neck to that of the ankles. The decoration is restricted to specific zones, the first of which, at the top, consists of several concentric semi-circles of floral ornaments interspersed with geometric designs intended to recall actual floral collars placed on the deceased. The lowest strand of this collar consists of a row of tear-dropped shaped pendants which frame the principle figural scene depicting a kneeling goddess, facing right, with her wings outstretched as are her arms. Her fisted hands each hold an ostrich feather symbolically representing truth. She is depicted wearing a tightly-fitting garment which leaves her breast exposed, jeweled accessories, and a wig, held in place by a fillet on which is placed a sun disc. There are three panels of hieroglyphs arranged in the field around her, but the signs within each are too imperfectly preserved to afford a continuous English translation. She is separated from the lower section of this lid by a rectangular frame decorated with a metope-like decoration of the same type, but smaller in size, which separates each of the four figures there depicted. These are the Four Sons of Horus, identified by their unmistakable mummiform shape and the stylized mummy bandages which they hold in their hands in front of their bodies. They can be identified from top to bottom, left to right, as the human-headed Imsety and the jackal-headed Duamutef and the baboon-headed Hapy and falcon-headed Qebehsenuef. A single vertical column of hieroglyphs separates these two pairs of figures. It contains the standard funerary prayer, which may be translated as follows, “A boon which pharaoh gives to the god Osiris, foremost the Westerners, the great god, the lord of Abydos, so that the god Osiris might in turn grant an invocation offering of [bread and beer], oxen and fowl, wine…”According to its style, our panel belongs to a typology of anthropoid sarcophagi which enjoyed great popularity from Dynasty XXVII to XXX. This was a period of intense foreign interaction during which time Persians successively asserted their authority over Egypt. The Egyptians in turn steadfastly adhered to their millennia-old religious beliefs. The predominant black color of our example is in accord with such an assessment because black came to symbolize the fertile alluvial soil from which the agricultural life of the country sprung. The color black was, therefore, symbolically charged with associations of resurrection and rebirth and served as an appropriate color for such anthropoid sarcophagi.References:For comments on some of these black-colored anthropoid sarcophagi, particularly those dated to Dynasty XXX, see, John H. Taylor, Egyptian Coffins (Bucks 1989), page 62, number 51.- (X.0443)   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 500 BC to 450 BC Dimensions: 12" (30.5cm) high Collection: Egyptian Antiquities Style: 27th Dynasty Medium: Alabaster Alabastron vessel featuring  More »

Origin: Egypt Circa: 500 BC to 450 BC Dimensions: 12" (30.5cm) high Collection: Egyptian Antiquities Style: 27th Dynasty Medium: Alabaster Alabastron vessel featuring an elongated 'drop-shaped' body tapering upwards into a barely suggested shoulder and a contracted neck terminating into a heavily rimmed lip. Its vestigial lug handles placed just below the shoulder.A soothing, rhythmic motion in the grain of this alabastron grants it an undecorated simplicity that is extremely calming and aesthetically pleasing to the eyes. Dark flowing bands highlight softer creamy waves that form a harmonious natural horizontal pattern in the stone. The alabastron's carving has been perfected to a high degree revealing an unsurpassed natural beauty and technical excellence. despite its size and girth, the vessel has a delicacy that is brought about by the refined articulation of its profile. The dramatic tones and surface patterning enliven the vessel's surface to create a unique work of art.Alabaster jars with these distinctive lug handles and underlying triangular ornamentation are linked to Egypt's 27th dynasty. This assigns our vessel to a comparative date of the 5th century BC. During this time Egypt was controlled by the Persians. Xerxes the Great was the Achaemenid king and third ruler of the 27th dynasty. In 525 BC, Egypt fell under the yoke of Persia and would have been governed by Persian Kings for about 200 years. A wealth of information has been passed down, especially by Herodotus on this particular period; Xerxes was famous for his battles against the Greeks at the Thermopylae and Salamis. Again according to Herodotus, his rule over Egypt was rather harsh, nevertheless traditional forms with some stylistic changes were still created for the upper classes and official purposes.Egyptian alabaster vessels were owned by the wealthy, served as royal paraphernalia for ritual libations and for the storage of oils, ointment, cosmetics and other costly substances. The interior of our alabastron is far smaller than its exterior would lead us to believe; possibly it contained expensive and precious materials, protected by its thick wall.A comparable example datable to the 6th century BC, even if not as substantial in size, is in the permanent colletion of the National Museum in Kassel, Germany. See Felgenhauer, A, Agyptische und Agyptisierende Kunstwerk, Staatliche Museen Kassel, 1996: no.12-14.For further information on alabastrons see Aston, B. Ancient Egyptian Stone Vessels: Materials and Forms, Heidelberg, 1994; and Lyliquist, C. Egyptian Stone Vessels: Khian through Tuthmosis IV, New York, 1995. - (LA.567)   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 600 BC to 500 BC Dimensions: 4.75" (12.1cm) high Collection: Egyptian Antiquities Style: Late Kingdom Medium: Silver

Origin: Egypt Circa: 600 BC to 500 BC Dimensions: 4.75" (12.1cm) high Collection: Egyptian Antiquities Style: Late Kingdom Medium: Silver   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 630 BC to 575 BC Dimensions: 3.75" (9.5cm) high Collection: Egyptian Art Style: Late Dynastic Period

Origin: Egypt Circa: 630 BC to 575 BC Dimensions: 3.75" (9.5cm) high Collection: Egyptian Art Style: Late Dynastic Period   « Less

Origin: Egypt Circa: 650 BC to 550 BC Dimensions: 5" (12.7cm) high Collection: Egyptian Art Style: Late Dynasty Medium: Wood and Cartonage Condition: Fine

Origin: Egypt Circa: 650 BC to 550 BC Dimensions: 5" (12.7cm) high Collection: Egyptian Art Style: Late Dynasty Medium: Wood and Cartonage Condition: Fine   « Less